Spike Lee’s New Michael Jackson-Influenced Brooklyn Project

Spike Lee's New Michael Jackson-Influenced Brooklyn Project

Check out this story on The Playlist (an expansion on a story by Roger Friedman) about a ridiculously interesting new project from Spike Lee: “Brooklyn Hearts MJ.”

The Playlist says the film – which has a finished script – is all about the “gentrification of Brooklyn.” The Playlist couldn’t verify the cast but Roger Friedman says it’s “huge and may contain Samuel L. Jackson, John Turturro, Julianne Moore, Rosie Perez, Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington.”

In the summer of 2009, in the heart of Fort Green, Brooklyn, 40-year-old Brooklyn Godlove is moved and deeply affected by the death of Michael Jackson. So moved, the professional DJ (who once preferred Prince), attempts to put on a communal neighborhood block party in tribute to the late singer with the help of his school teacher wife. But his memorial is met with serious resistance by the (white) president of the local resident’s association. Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s drug-dealing half-brother Tariq’s presence is felt deeper in the neighborhood when a series of drug-related shootings occur involving children — and even the head of the community association which makes Brooklyn a suspect. Eventually, as neighborhood events keep getting uglier, a showdown between the two brothers — who have affected the entire community — seems inevitable.

The scope’s fairly sprawling, and very reminiscent of “Do The Right Thing”; in many ways, it serves as a companion piece, twenty years on, to that film, looking at black-white relations in the supposedly “post-racial” Obama era. But by looking at the use of kids as dealers, you can feel the heavy influence of “The Wire,” and it’s not a comparison that necessarily does “Brooklyn Hearts MJ” any favors.

Whether a comparison to “The Wire” does it favors or not, this has got to be one of Lee’s most promising narrative projects in some time.